As I lined up for the press screening of Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? I had absolutely no idea what to expect.  The official Sundance programming guide described it as an emotionally charged film about religious differences in a small town in Lebanon and, oh yeah, did mention it’s also a musical?

Never before had I seen a Lebanese film let alone one that was a musical, so in essence it is very likely that the novelty of it all that made me line up for this film in the first place.  Plus religion is almost always a good hot button issue for films, so I figured it would at least prove to be an interesting point of conversation on the bus ride back to my car.

The plot of the film revolves around a small Lebanese town that has been completely divided by both the presence of a Catholic church and a Muslim temple.  The women of the town, tired of seeing their husbands, sons, and brothers turned to dust by all the in-fighting, take it upon themselves to try to teach tolerance within their village with tactics ranging from faking a miracle of the Virgin Mary, to drugging the whole town with hash brownies at a town meeting.

Now this film could have been an overly depressing endeavor much like Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, but instead Labaki takes things in a different direction, incorporating proportionate amounts of comedy along with the drama.  This ends up making the comedic moments that much funnier while in return, makes seeing this village being torn apart by intolerance, that much more heartbreaking.  Think of it as a sort of Mashup of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and West Side Story.

The only problem I seemed to have with this film, was in its inability to commit to the idea of being a “musical”.  The film itself runs about an hour and forty minutes, and in that whole time there are only 4 musical numbers.  That breaks down to one song every 22 minutes or so… hardly enough to call this film a musical.

The first musical number in the film started off really well.  It had some beautiful choreography that brought to light one of the film’s subplots; two people from opposite sides, that start to fall for each other.  However as the musical number progressed, it seemed like Labaki couldn’t figure out if she wanted the characters to sing the songs themselves, or to just be dancing around while music was overdubbed onto the scene.  This sense of indecision as to how to approach the musical numbers only served to snap me out of the world of the film, and that is never a good thing.

I will say though that the 4th and final song was actually really, really good.  It had a more traditional stage musical feel to it and at one point I even caught myself tapping my fingers along to the beat.  So even though these musical numbers could have just as well been thrown out completely, they don’t really diminish the film in any significant way.  In the end I still really enjoyed it and honestly it is the first film I’ve seen so far, that I actually plan on revisiting after the festival.

[Rating:4/5]

Wanna see more?  Check out the trailer for “Where Do We Go Now?” below!